Eliminate "zero-sum" thinking

One of the reasons we don't feel more abundance is because we've bought into the mindset that everything is a zero-sum game. Somebody has to lose in order for anybody to win.

Hollywood says so.

Our media tells us that it's the case.

Politicians don’t get it.

Successful entrepreneurs get it.

Bigg success is life on your own terms. Implicit in that definition is that you are the entrepreneur of your life.

You own it. You are in charge. There’s something successful entrepreneurs understand that many people – including the elite in our society – just don’t get.

Entrepreneurs know that they win second.

In order for them to win, at least some portion of society must win first. They create fortunes because they understand that there are very few zero-sum games in the world.

Think about it. In most cases, we do business with people because it's mutually beneficial. If it weren't, we would stop doing business together.

So if we take the "zero-sum" attitude, we won't create value. If one party has to lose so the other party can win, nothing is added to society.

Bill Gates got it. He became the richest person in the world because a large number of people felt that Microsoft’s products made their lives and / or their businesses better.

Some argue about his contribution. That will be true of your contribution as well. You will face critics if you do anything of any significance.

But you won’t care.

You will let the market vote. You will know that you have helped people win because they will vote with their dollars. They choose to work with you because you make their lives better in some way.

Warren Buffett got it. Like Bill Gates, he has ascended to the top of the list of the richest people in the world. He did it by delivering returns to his investors that they couldn’t achieve on their own.

To live abundantly, we must first discard the zero-sum game mentality.

Create wealth by creating value

The best way to do that is one relationship at a time. We must adopt a win / win attitude in every relationship we have. When we do that we create value.

The value of any relationship is the emotional goodwill you have created in that relationship. The sum of the value of all of your relationships is the value of your network.

Now and in the foreseeable future, the greatest wealth will be created by people with the best networks. Create value – and therefore abundance – for other people and you'll find abundance in your own life.

Now, please understand that it doesn't happen instantly. In the economy of a previous generation, you had to plant in the spring if you wanted to harvest in the fall. It may take days, weeks, months, or even years for you to see the result.

However, if all you see when you look at people is dollar signs, you won't harvest the opportunities presented in the years ahead. You won't create wealth. You won't feel abundance.

Put other people first. Look for a win for them with all the fervor you look for a win for you. That’s a mindset that leads to bigg success.

We’re thrilled that you checked in with us today. Thanks so much.

Please join us next time as we wrap up this series on abundance. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

Who won the World Series? We know it was NOT the Chicago Cubs. Will that ever happen? The Philadelphia Phillies won it this year. Maybe baseball’s not your thing, so let’s try this one …

Who won the Super Bowl last year? The New York Giants.

What movie won the Oscar for best film?No Country for Old Men.

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I have to admit that I haven’t seen this movie. On the other hand, I don’t have a country either!

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You aren't an old man either…yet!

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Who topped the Forbes 400 this year? Warren Buffett overtook Bill Gates to be named the richest person in the world. Of course, this was long before the recent financial turmoil. We’ll see how he rates this next year.

Who was the American Idol? You may say, “Who cares?” You may not, but millions do. It was David Cook.

So how did you do? We found it interesting that we didn’t really remember many of these events without some prodding.

The surprising list of the most important people of 2008

We had to look many of these up. For example, as soon as we realized the Giants won the Super Bowl, we could picture in our minds the pass from Eli Manning, escaping the nearby defenders, to David Tyree, who caught the ball on top of his helmet. That catch allowed the Giants to keep the drive going that ultimately lead to the winning touchdown.

As we discussed it, we realized there are people who you remember without having to really think about it. So here are a few questions for you to think about to help discover the most important people of 2008:

Name a friend who helped you through a difficult time in 2008. They deserve a toast!

Name a person who taught you something worthwhile in 2008. Roll out the red carpet for them!

Name someone who made you feel special in 2008. Give them a bigg party horn toot!

Name a person who you particularly enjoyed spending time with in 2008. Reach out and touch them – figuratively, not literally!

This list is not exhaustive. Feel free to add categories. But you get the point – in spite of the fact that there are people who accomplish bigg things, who excel in their chosen field, we often don’t remember it.

It’s the people who affect us individually that we remember. We recall those little acts of kindness, that one-to-one help, individual caring and sharing. These things may seem small and inconsequential, but they’re not because they affect us personally.

So here’s one more question: Who would put you on their list?

We do! You’re on our list of the most important people of 2008 because you take time to check in on us. We thank you so much and wish you a peaceful, prosperous, and happy New Year! Here’s to your bigg success in 2009!

We recommend you check out his full list to see how you stack up. Today, we’re going to highlight three tools for getting the information you need.

Your daily reading regimen

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Reading is so important. Warren Buffett says so. I remember one of the patriarchs of the venture capital industry telling me that he was aghast that many of his young staffers read only The Wall Street Journal every day. He told them they needed to expand their horizons and read at least one additional daily paper.

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Seth Godin suggested that you should read at least five blogs a day. There are so many resources online to keep up with content that’s important to you. Don’t get stuck in either the real or the virtual world. Read online and offline!

RSS

He also asked if you have an RSS reader. We might ask an even simpler question – do you understand what an RSS feed is? If you don’t, don’t feel bad … but learn what an incredible tool it is.

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There are a lot of sites I like to keep up with. What I love about RSS feeds is the content comes to me; I don’t have to go to it. With my RSS reader, they’re all in one location so I can easily scan the headlines. It saves me a lot of time.

Alerts

Do you know how to set up a search for a certain word, phrase, or subject? Alerts help you collect information without having to go get it. We have an article that provides a number of applications to set up alerts.

One great way to test out alerts is to set one up for your web site or your name. For example, we have an alert set up for biggsuccess.com and bigg success.

Subscription

You can get the tips and tools you need to be a BIGG success by subscribing to The Bigg Success Weekly – it’s free! And when we say “weekly”, we mean it. We don’t abuse the privilege you’ve trusted us with. Subscribe now and get our free Bigg Goal-Getters Workbook!

Search for the information you need

Seth Godin also emphasized that you must be effective at searching the internet. You can use some shortcuts to get to the content you’re really looking for.

For example, quotation marks around the phrase you’re searching helps refine the search. If we type bigg success, Google will search for every instance of the word bigg and the word success. When we tried this yesterday, Google returned 20,500,000 pages.

By typing in “bigg success” with the quotation marks, Google searches for that phrase as one term. So it only returns instances where the two words are together. That search “only” returned 19,500 pages.

It’s interesting advice because a poll by the Associated Press – Ipsos showed that one in four Americans hasn’t read a single book in the last year. At least, that’s how the news reported it – we look at that and see that three out of four Americans did read a book last year!

In fact, the last Gallup poll that we saw on this subject showed that over half of all Americans have read more than 5 books in the last year!

Read, read, read … for the sake of your career (and finances)

We hear about the “haves” and the “have nots”. A study by the National Endowment for the Arts [pdf] showed the impact of reading on a person’s well-being – reading less leads to lower reading proficiency which leads to fewer (and lower quality) career opportunities.

For example, according to the study, “Proficient Readers” are 2.5 times more likely than “Basic Readers” to earn at least $850 each week. This study also showed that 44% of Basic Readers lack a full- or part-time job, two times the percentage of Proficient Readers.

So, Warren Buffett said it well … read, read, read.

Read, read, read … to expand your imagination

"When I was young … okay I’d like to think I’m still young … so when I was younger, I used to just read non-fiction, and specifically books on business and investing. Then I took a literature class with a phenomenal professor – a short-story class. It made me use my imagination in a way I didn’t do when I just read books that I thought were more practical."

And as Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than intelligence.”

What’s nice about reading, rather than watching, is that you are the director. You create a vision of the story – the characters, the setting.

"Just think about how many times you’ve read a book that gets turned into a movie. So you get all excited and go see the movie … and it’s not as good as the book! For me, a great example is Stephen King’s book, It. I scared myself more reading that book than watching the movie!"

It’s much more interactive mentally and the skills carry over to your professional life.

A simple commitment to reading that’s worked better than a college degreeWe have a friend who worked his way up in a small business. In fact, he ended up buying the business from the owner. After he bought it, he wished he would have gotten a college degree. But he didn’t have the time – he had a business to run!

So he made a commitment to himself – to read one business book every week. He reads the best sellers and he talks to friends for recommendations. He has that done for years now. He knows more about business than just about anybody we know.

It’s interesting advice because a poll by the Associated Press – Ipsos showed that one in four Americans hasn’t read a single book in the last year. At least, that’s how the news reported it – we look at that and see that three out of four Americans did read a book last year!

In fact, the last Gallup poll that we saw on this subject showed that over half of all Americans have read more than 5 books in the last year!

Read, read, read … for the sake of your career (and finances)

We hear about the “haves” and the “have nots”. A study by the National Endowment for the Arts [pdf] showed the impact of reading on a person’s well-being – reading less leads to lower reading proficiency which leads to fewer (and lower quality) career opportunities.

For example, according to the study, “Proficient Readers” are 2.5 times more likely than “Basic Readers” to earn at least $850 each week. This study also showed that 44% of Basic Readers lack a full- or part-time job, two times the percentage of Proficient Readers.

So, Warren Buffett said it well … read, read, read.

Read, read, read … to expand your imagination

"When I was young … okay I’d like to think I’m still young … so when I was younger, I used to just read non-fiction, and specifically books on business and investing. Then I took a literature class with a phenomenal professor – a short-story class. It made me use my imagination in a way I didn’t do when I just read books that I thought were more practical."

And as Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than intelligence.”

What’s nice about reading, rather than watching, is that you are the director. You create a vision of the story – the characters, the setting.

"Just think about how many times you’ve read a book that gets turned into a movie. So you get all excited and go see the movie … and it’s not as good as the book! For me, a great example is Stephen King’s book, It. I scared myself more reading that book than watching the movie!"

It’s much more interactive mentally and the skills carry over to your professional life.

A simple commitment to reading that’s worked better than a college degreeWe have a friend who worked his way up in a small business. In fact, he ended up buying the business from the owner. After he bought it, he wished he would have gotten a college degree. But he didn’t have the time – he had a business to run!

So he made a commitment to himself – to read one business book every week. He reads the best sellers and he talks to friends for recommendations. He has that done for years now. He knows more about business than just about anybody we know.

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Warren Buffett, the richest man in the world according to Forbes, may well be the greatest investor of all time. Not surprisingly, he recently made a sizeable investment in Goldman Sachs, one of the firms who had been battered by the recent crisis on Wall Street.

Typical Buffett move.

It goes along with his strategy “to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy when others are fearful.”

So what does Buffett know? Why is he willing to invest now in the midst of all this financial turmoil?

Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett’s college professor and mentor said, “An investor’s worst enemy is not the stock market, but oneself.”

Profiting from pessimism

“The most common cause of low prices is pessimism – sometimes pervasive, sometimes specific to a company or an industry. We want to do business in such an environment, not because we like pessimism but because we like the prices it produces. It’s optimism that is the enemy of the rational buyer.”

However, many investors do the opposite. They buy when everyone is buying, which drives prices higher. They sell when everyone is selling, driving prices down.

Think of it this way – if all the restaurants in your community suddenly cut their prices by twenty percent, would you eat out more?

Of course you would!

This billionaire’s stocks returned 9,900 percent

Another man who understood business and stock market cycles was the late J. Paul Getty, one of the world’s first billionaires and, at one time, the richest man in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

In his book, How To Be Rich, he says, “I began buying stocks at the depths of the Depression. Prices were at their lowest, and there weren’t many stock buyers around. Most people with money to invest were unable to see the forest of potential profit for the multitudinous trees of their largely baseless fears. I had confidence in the future of the American economy and realized that shares of many entirely sound companies with fine potentials were selling at only a fraction of their true worth.”

He goes on to say that he made over 100 times his investment on many of these stocks, bought during the depths of the Great Depression!

The best time to buy stocks

He continues, “Common stocks should be purchased when their prices are low, not after they have risen to high levels during an upward bull-market spiral. Buy when everyone is selling and hold on until everyone else is buying – this is more than just a catch slogan. It is the very essence of successful investment.”

How did he have so much confidence that prices would go up?

Because as he explains, “History shows that the overall trend of stock prices – like the overall trend of living costs, wages and almost everything else – is up. Naturally there have been and always will be dips, slumps, recessions and even depressions, but these are invariably followed by recoveries which carry most stock prices to new highs. Assuming that a stock and the company behind it are sound, an investor can hardly lose if he buys shares at the bottom and holds them until the inevitable upward cycle gets under way.”

The worst time to sell

J. Paul Getty fully understood the turbulence we faced. While every stock market crash or bear market has its own unique features, they also have a lot in common.

Getty said, “The anatomy of a stock market boom-and-bust … is not too difficult to analyze. The seeds of any bust are inherent in any boom that outstrips the pace of whatever solid factors gave it its impetus in the first place.”

Getty offered advice to weather the storms. He said, “Another valuable investment secret is that the owners of sound securities should never panic and unload their holdings when prices skid. Countless individuals have panicked during slumps, selling out when their stocks fell a few points, only to find that before long the prices were once more rising.”

Think about the advice from these two great investors when you’re thinking of buying … or selling.